After flooding and gas leaks, a South Carolina town has “heartburn” over demand for fiber optic cables

Plans to lay a new fiber optic cable line in an Irmo neighborhood are causing “confusion” among city officials.

The Irmo City Council on Tuesday tentatively approved a request from Spectrum Southeast to excavate in Veterans Park to lay new fiber optic internet cables for the Bickley Station neighborhood.

“Every time I hear of an easement where someone is digging in the ground, I get heartburn, anxiety and a headache,” Mayor Bill Danielson said of the request. “And that's before we even approve it.”

The mayor is not the only one who is outraged at new underground cables. Because there is limited space underground to run a variety of utilities, work to lay fiber-optic cables in recent years has caused everything from flooding and burst water mains to gas leaks that have forced residents to evacuate their homes.

“I want to know what we can do,” Danielson asked city staff. “What will our park look like when these people are done digging? What will the road look like when people drive home on steel plates on Palmetto Wood Parkway for six months?”

Gas leaks, floods and urinating in bushes

Last year, the city of Columbia halted work by internet service provider Lumos after its crews caused half a dozen gas leaks, one of which required the temporary evacuation of several residents of the Elmwood Park neighborhood and the closure of busy Elmwood Avenue.

In March, the city of Lexington halted Ripple Fiber's work following complaints that the company's workers had ripped up residents' front yards without repairing them, knocked out a man's phone line for a week and urinated in people's bushes.

Irmo City Manager Courtney Dennis said the proposed Spectrum easement will be set 12 feet from the sidewalk, farther than is typical for the city, to try to keep the work separate from existing utilities.

“It's a little less likely to hit them,” Dennis said. “It'll get close to our irrigation system, but that's easier to fix than a gas line.”

“That's probably a bigger problem with rights of way,” he added. “They're not meant to be crammed with 15 different utilities.”

Irmo cannot require a bond from the contractor who will install the lines, the council was told. But City Attorney Jake Moore said Irmo could add provisions to its permit requiring the contractor to restore the area to its original condition and repair any damage to the utility lines “expeditiously.”

The City Council approved the request “subject to modification.” Council members will review the request at a workshop on September 3 and vote on it at the next Council meeting on September 17. However, the mayor still seemed wary of the public's reaction to utility work in a city park.

“They know we are bombarded with emails,” Danielson said.